eclaire (what's in a) name?

as it gets darker and colder, i’m having a kind of reverse spring cleaning urge – i’ve been busy organizing closets and cupboards and getting things updated and reordered here on my blog. (although i may just hibernate soon – i think a lot of the cleaning fervor came from election anxiety, and now that i know our country will be in amazing hands soon, i think i can safely tuck in for the winter : ) ).

one of my latest projects was sparked by the discovery of flour beetles in flour we were about to use to make a cake for my mom’s birthday. we promptly threw out the flour, bought brand new stuff, and made a delicious cake. but the incident (and worry about future outbreaks) was enough to launch me into hours of consolidating bulk foods into existing containers and then buying new containers to house boxed foods (corn meal, corn starch, cake flour, couscous, etc). by the time all items were securely repackaged into airtight containers, as shown above, i was tired but excited to have accomplished the feat (i should have taken a before pic!).

the other big project mike and i undertook last weekend (after having tons of fun on halloween) was to make some changes to this website (ok, mike is the one who has made all the changes – i just had some ideas). on the right column of my blog, you’ll see that you can enter your email address to receive an email every time that i post, so you don’t have to keep checking the website if you don’t subscribe to the rss feed. also in the right column, you can now select a category (breakfast, entree, soup, salad, dessert) to look through all recipes or posts in that genre. and if you scroll past my blog lists, you’ll see a better tag cloud in case you’re looking for a recipe for a specific ingredient, and as always, the search option below that.

please let me know if there are any other ways i can make my site more conducive to you, my dearest readers, and thank you in advance for any input you might have!

my macbook’s monitor has been having issues, so we brought it in to the apple store last weekend. thus, i’m without a laptop for a whole week and have to draw straws with mike to try to get some time on his macbook. so i’m not sure if i’ll get to do a real post this week. but to tide you over, i thought i’d share the interesting website below, where you get to make your own breakfast cereal. it’s more expensive than oatmeal or the muesli i often consume, but it’s got me thinking about how awesome it would be to create your own cereal and have it shipped to you within a week! check it out:

http://www.meandgoji.com/CreateYourMix.aspx

as you probably have gathered already from my posts, i am a vegetarian who doesn’t consume much dairy. most of my friends and family members are omnivores, however, and i completely respect their eating preferences (and hope that they respect mine!) because i think that people (in general and in moderation) should eat what sounds appealing to them.

the beginnings of my vegetarian preferences go back to my childhood – i never enjoyed eating meat unless it was disguised in the form of a hot dog or potsticker. although my mom, dad, and sister are omnivores, my parents prepared many meat free meals, and thus i knew the option of not eating meat (and eating lots of yummy tofu!) was possible. around the age of 10, after many years of bargaining with me to eat just one more bite of meat, my parents decided i was old enough to make my own food decisions and to help them prepare vegetarian meals. they suggested i read the book diet for a small planet, and from this book – and them – i learned about nutrition and how to combine complementary foods to create complete proteins (like rice and beans). i chose to be a vegetarian way before i learned about how meat is produced and the environmental impact of mass production of raising animals for human consumption – but once i learned about these issues, i realized that vegetarianism went hand in hand with my personal belief system.

october 1 is world vegetarian day, and while i am not the kind of vegetarian who tries to convert people to my way of thinking or eating, i would like to challenge each and every one of you to eliminate meat in your diet tomorrow. if that doesn’t sound feasible to you, maybe try eating a lot less meat than you usually do, just to see what it’s like to eat more veggies, fruit, and grains.

as you ponder this challenge and think about what you might be eating tomorrow, i’ll leave you with the seven word quote from the fantastic author michael pollan: “eat food. not too much. mostly plants.”

ok, so it’s not my own cookbook and i *may* have been told which categories to enter recipes in so as to help fill out the compilation, but nonetheless, the friends of hospice’s cookbook is here, and the sentinel printed an article about it:

http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_10186160

as i teeter on the brink of veganism (ie greatly minimizing but not yet completely eliminating dairy and eggs from my already veggie diet), and work my way slowly through michael pollan’s book the omnivore’s dilemma, i have been thinking a lot more about what i put into my body and why. the article below is a little long, but provides an interesting conversation about veganism, the wavy line of dietary classifications, honey, and the plight of the oh-so-important honeybee:

the great vegan honey debate